Best Laid Plans
by secretmonkey
Summary: Slight tweak on S2 finale. What if the plan went to hell and, with no other choice, Nicole had to run with Alice? One shot for now, but could be more (if people like it). Mostly Nicole, with brief appearances by the Earps.
1. Enough

The plan was good. The plan was solid and smart and, you don't mind saying, it was just about the most logical (and adult) thing you'd ever seen Wynonna come up with.

And then, of course, it all went to shit. So, you know, even _more_ Wynonna.

Rosita was first. You've never been sure exactly what happened with her, but seeing her tearing ass out of Shorty's back door like some revenant bat out of hell (which, as descriptions go, was both sorta accurate _and_ sorta redundant) was a fairly large tip off that something might be going just the tiniest bit awry.

You didn't need to be the best (or, really, _only_ ) detective on the force to figure that one.

There was a moment - one that lasted probably far longer than it should have but still far shorter than your usual - when you thought about rushing right on in. Gun drawn, foot smashing through that door, yelling something about taking out all those shit-fuckers (not the _best_ taunt, you know, but you're a _cop_ , not a writer) (or, you know, _Waverly_ ) and saving the day.

But then you remembered some of your other attempts at day saving _and_ that hospital bed you thought you might never leave (and that's not even _mentioning_ how seeing Shae sitting next to said bed made you wonder if death might be the _better_ option) and realized that whatever had sent Rosita running for the hills might well make you do the same, just without her 'I'm already dead' invulnerability (or poor footwear for _running_ choices.) And you being dead would really mess up the plan and you _promised_ Wynonna.

That was what did it, you think, what made you stay put in the car. Your promise.

 _Or_ , maybe, it was that whole weird like a teenage girl (you) trying so desperately to impress the cool kids (the Black Badges) thing you had going on _or_ , maybe, it was your _still_ weird but slightly more grown up girl (still you) trying even _more_ desperately to please your girlfriend's judgey (but not because you were gay and _that_ was still a bit odd) family thing _or_ , maybe (and yeah, you are well fucking _aware_ that that's at least one too many 'or's and even _more_ too many things) it was Wynonna's million and one reminders to, no matter what, "Stick to the fucking plan, Haught. The plan is all that matters."

And nope, you didn't need to be a good detective - like _at all_ \- to know that when Wynonna _said_ 'plan', she meant ' _baby_ ' and you getting dead, even dead in the line of Earp duty, would do _her_ no good at all.

And _that_ was what did it, what made you stay put. That was why you sat and you waited and you watched and, while you did all _that_?

You _prayed_.

And if _that's_ not a sign of how _shit_ it all went to shit, you don't know what is.

* * *

Rosita was first but Bobo was worse.

(Or, you know, _worst_ because that would rhyme _perfectly_ and Lord knows you've read enough rhyming _shit_ over the last year and a half - and why people think that little kids need _everything_ Seuss-ified is _beyond_ you - and it entertains the tiny, but _damn_ you don't need to _think_ in it too.)

Thinking back on it - without _rhyme_ \- is something you've had more than enough time to do over that time and you've come to one inescapable conclusion. Someone should have seen it - and by 'it', you _so_ fucking _mean_ 'him' - coming. And… well… they did, sort of. It's not like the entire BBD braintrust of Purgatory _didn't_ expect that Bobo would try to stop anyone making any move to get the baby the fuck out of Dodge.

"Bobo's _definitely_ going to try to stop anyone making _any_ move to get this baby the fuck out of Dodge," Dolls said (he always was the smartest.) They all agreed, nodding in that 'you have a good point, but I've got _shit_ in the way of ideas on how to deal with it' way that was par for the Purgatory course back then, which then usually lead to Wynonna deciding to shoot something and to Doc going right along with her - as if he was going to argue with _shooting_ \- and Jeremy saying something dorky (and borderline inappropriate) and Dolls trying to come up with a plan, an _actual_ one, and to Waverly kissing you because it calmed her and helped her think.

Or so she claimed.

As if _you_ were going to argue with _kissing_.

Even if, most of the time, the shooting didn't sound like _all_ that _bad_ an idea _and_ you had at least one (or two or three or _twelve_ ) plans so damn good they put even the Deputy Marshall's ideas to shame. You always knew you were helping - and not _just_ by 'calming' Waverly - but you could've helped so much _more_ if they'd just let you be something other than the stay behind at the station until everything else has gone to fuck all and maybe we should listen to Nicole last resort.

Of course, if they (and you totally mean _her_ , as in the _heir_ ) hadn't done that… well…

You watch Alice playing in the sandbox and there's a shudder that runs through you and yeah, maybe being the last _choice_ wasn't so bad.

It was still a choice.

So, they'd agreed on the danger of Bobo, even Doc who was _super_ busy staring with utter _terror_ at Wynonna's 'oh shit, any _second_ now' belly _and_ glaring at Dolls in that whole 'you shot me and I know it was some weird alternate reality _bullshit_ , but you _killed me_ ' way that he thought no one else noticed.

As if they could miss it.

So, they agreed and they knew and they thought about it and they were - supposedly - ready for it, so they should have seen it coming, but really, who would have ever thought that the battle of Bobo vs. helicopter would actually go the way of the revenant?

(Well… maybe anyone who had ever seen a _bad_ movie and knew just how easily a helicopter, especially one being flown by a _clearly_ deus ex machina pretty boy, could be taken down.)

(So, you know… _you_.)

You were about three minutes away from the rendezvous and, for once, your habit of stopping at every intersection - big red sign or not - probably saved lives, like, you know, _yours_. If you'd been three minutes _sooner,_ that rotor blade that embedded itself in that Oak tree _right next_ to where you'd have parked might have found a more fleshy and less barky target and, as noted, you getting dead would have… um... _killed_ the plan.

(No pun intended.)

(You don't joke about your own death. At least not by flying helicopter parts.) (We've all got our weird phobias, _shut up_.)

Though, to be fair to all of them, Bobo managing to crash Perry's chopper through the power of his _mind -_ which was only like the third or fourth weirdest thing you ever saw - did a pretty good job of DOA'ing the plan all on its own.

Plan 'A' at least.

* * *

So… Plan 'B'.

Once upon a time (another of those phrases you've said more in the last year and a half, than in all the twenty-seven that came _before_ ) you would have liked to think that _you_ were Plan 'B' or, at the very least, you were a _part_ of it - even just a _bit_ \- that you were something of a very key cog in something higher up on the list than Plan 'We're all out of _other_ plans'.

And yes, you know _Wynonna_ asked _you_ and you know she said that you were the 'only one', but you're not deluded enough to think that had anything to do with _anything other_ than your DNA.

What with it being _human_ and all.

Once upon a time, you'd have wanted, maybe even _needed_ (so not _maybe_ ) to be something more than the getaway driver, the chauffeur. It would have _mattered_ back then, it would have mattered _a lot_.

This ain't once upon a time anymore and you've come to learn that there are things - people, small and innocent and defenseless _people_ \- that matter far more than your silly wants.

So… about that Plan 'B'. One thing you learned over all the time you spent with Wynonna: she _always_ had one. Of course, it was usually just to shoot everything in sight and then spend days drinking away the guilt for any collateral damage she might have caused, but hey… a plan is a plan.

And, in her defense, demons and hellspawns and whatever the _fuck_ that thing that almost came through - the one with the tentacles and the goo and the Willa - aren't exactly the sorts of things you can really _plan_ for unless you're _really_ drunk or sort of evil or just plain ol' out of your fucking mind.

(And yes, you know _exactly_ how well that describes _her_ , but… _details_.)

Still, that time, the time she was sitting on a (or not really _sitting_ cause it hurt her back and made her ankles swell even more) a timebomb that could have changed _everything_ , Wynonna actually _had_ herself a backup plan. And a backup to that backup and even a backup to _that_ backup (that one _was_ to shoot everything in sight) and she laid it all out for you, plain and simple.

"If something happens," she said, "if _anything_ happens and Perry can't get the baby out, then you bring her right back to me, you understand, Haught?"

You nodded and ignored the fact that Wynonna said 'her' (some wishful thinking or pregnant ESP you've never been sure) and then you'd _sworn_ \- on a bottle of whiskey so, you know, on the Earp family _Bible_ \- and then she'd stared at you, eyes locked on for so long that it got a bit unnerving, almost to the point where you started wondering where Peacemaker was or if she was imagining it glowing gold between your eyes and then, finally, she spoke again and you kinda wished she _was_.

"Fuck that," Wynonna said and it might well have been the quietest you'd ever heard her, so quiet that you almost _didn't_. "If something happens, if anything goes wrong… don't you _dare_ bring her back to me. You run, Nicole. You run and take her across that damn line and so far out of this fucking triangle that you can't even remember where it is."

And then she looked at you again and if you thought thousand-yard-stare Wynonna was scary, well, desperately facing her own mortality, the loss of her child, and breaking Waverly's heart all in one fell swoop Wynonna was Goddamned _terrifying_.

"You're the only one who can," she said, dropping her eyes the moment the words were out. "I know what I'm asking and what it is I'd be taking from you," she said, "and I know I don't have the right, but…"

She trailed off at the feel of your hand on hers - and was that the first time you'd ever touched her, like something more than a helping hand up or a brush by in the hall? - and she was right, of course, she _didn't_ have the right to ask.

But when had that ever stopped her?

"I will," you whispered, your own thousand-yard-stare going over her shoulder, watching Waverly in the corner, whispering with Doc while Dolls lingered in the background giving Doc a 'you shot me even if it wasn't _really_ you _or_ me' glare of his own. You weren't stupid and you knew _exactly_ what you were promising and what you were giving up and somehow, in that moment when it seemed ridiculous, when it seemed like Plan 'A' was absolutely foolproof and that Wynonna had thought of _everything_?

You _knew_.

And it broke your heart but Wynonna was right, again.

It had to be you.

Sometimes, it really sucks being the only _normal_ one.

* * *

Normal isn't a word you ever _really_ thought applied to you. Normal, you thought, was a word for people who _fit_.

 _That_ was one thing you _never_ did.

You didn't fit with your family, even before you came out and found yourself _actually_ out. It was the way you dressed or the ways you wore your hair or the way you had next to no tolerance for the _bullshit_. Like, for an _instance_ , the undercurrent of misogyny in everything (and you do mean _everything_ ) your father said and did. Or the way your mother not only took it, but seemed not to _mind_. Or the way your sis and your bro were… well… sis and bro.

They were too cool for school and too cool for _you_ and, really, if _they_ were cool, then _you_ were absolutely fine with never being anything _close_ to it.

And it wasn't just _family_ , because that you could have almost accepted, that you could've found almost… well… normal. But it was every _where_ and it was every _one_. Your friends - the few you bothered to try and have - were only barely there before and then, _after_ , when word got around and that word was _gay_ …

That word was alone. Not that you really noticed or minded or thought much of it. You'd been alone in crowded rooms for years and you knew that somewhere, out there in the ether of what might be, there was a some _one_ (or more than one) and a some _where_ (a lot of them, actually) to fit with you and take you in and make you a home.

And you were right.

Which is why when Wynonna asked, even though you knew - fucking _knew_ \- that it had to be you and that it was _worth it_ , you still almost said no.

But that was the thing about fitting. It was everything you thought it might be and even _more_ but it didn't come free. It came at a cost. The high price of love and devotion and care.

The wages of family.

But before you got _there_ , there were those other stops along the way, all those square holes that your round peg just couldn't fit, couldn't fill. Like the academy. No fit for you there either, not in your classes, not with the men and women who wanted nothing more than meaningless work in some small town, to just be _the_ badge, the big fish in the small pond, they were all the ones who were happy with just _being_.

 _Just_.

That was the problem. You've never been _just_ anything and sure, sometimes you've wished for a tiny bit more 'just' in your life, but only just… well...

Just _enough_.

Enough to give you just _some_ of those things that the normals have, the only things you were ever jealous of them for - like the wife and the home and the love and the _life_ \- those were the only normals, the only 'justs' you wanted. Just that some _one_ and that some _where_ , just a heart that you knew beat for you, not despite the way you dressed or the ways you wore your hair or the feelings you felt that _they_ never got.

 _Because_ of those things. All of them.

(OK, maybe not the _dressed_ one cause, really, you expected to spend like eighty to ninety percent of your life in uniform and, _seriously_ , who expected _that_ to be as hot as it ended up being?)

When you think about it now - which you try not to, but it always creeps on in when you least expect it, like when you're giving Alice her bath or tucking her in or watching her sleep - you know Wynonna didn't mean it, you know it was the goo talking, but you can't help remember how she told you ( _taunted_ ) (she _taunted_ you) about Waverly not being the white picket fence type, and you wanted to laugh in her face, you wanted to tell her that you didn't care and that wasn't what you _wanted_ , anyway.

But you couldn't. Despite not coming out for _years_ , you're just fuck all as a liar.

 _Were_.

You've gotten a bit better at it this last year or so. Except, maybe, to yourself.

Which probably explains why you can't quite _buy_ those thoughts you try so hard to flood your mind with every day, the ones that say how you miss them all and you miss that town and you miss that life and you'd trade all of _this_ for _that_ in a _heartbeat_.

You'd trade normal - a single mother living in a small apartment with a trusted babysitter who comes every morning and a simple job that doesn't require a _gun_ (though you do keep yours locked in the drawer of your nightside table, fully loaded, safety off, _always_ ) and even a date or two, now and then - for the shitstorm of Purgatory without a second thought. _That's_ what all you tell yourself, every day.

And if you ever believe it?

Well… then you'll know.

It's time for Plan fucking 'B'.

* * *

They would make the call. Wynonna drilled that into your head. _They_ would call _you_ and only when ( _if_ ) it was safe.

You knew that was a lie hearing it as sure as she did _saying_ it. 'Safe' was a joke, a condition that would never be met so long as there was a curse, so long as there was a single demon, a single revenant shit-ticket roaming the Earth. And still, safe or not - so _obviously_ not - there'd be a call.

All you could do was hope that it wouldn't be a call to say goodbye. As in, forever, as in no hope, as in the curse had claimed them and there was nothing and no one and maybe even nowhere for you to ever come back to.

Even now, you still have nightmares about _that_ call and sometimes - like the days when Isobel takes Alice to the park with the other kids from the building, leaving you all alone, nothing but your thoughts and high speed internet connection for company - you still do deep-dive Google searches, looking for any mention of some small town no one has ever heard of that just… isn't, anymore.

Purgatory's still there, as best you can figure. It _and_ them or so you _think_ because even if, once upon a time, you were _sure_ , like _certain_ , that you would _feel_ it - that it would _kill you_ \- if anything ever happened to Waverly?

This isn't once upon an anything anymore, _remember_?

The call - the first and last one you ever got - came a day's ride outside Purgatory. You spent that day (and that night) not worrying about what might have happened after you ran.

"I can't," you said to Alice (as much as to yourself.) "I can't because if I _do_ , I'm gonna turn this car around and we're gonna go straight home."

Less than a day and you already sounded like a mom.

"They're fine," you told her. "They're _always_ fine. They found a way out of it. Out of Bobo and all the revenants storming the castle and that demon Waverly helped them wake up and they're gonna _end_ him _and_ the curse and, you know, maybe it'll take a few days, maybe a week or even _two_ , but they're gonna do it. And then they'll call."

You had visions - flashes right before your eyes - of a future filled with telling her that same load of the bullshittiest bullshit _ever_ , day after day after day.

 _Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning._

Sure, _Groundhog_ _Day_ might have been the more _current_ reference, but _Princess Bride_ beats everything every day of the week and twice on Sundays. And, if it taught you nothing else, it was that true love always wins.

Fucking movie was full of fucking shit, that's what it taught you.

But then the call came - that day's ride later - as you and the baby (that's _all_ she was then, just 'the baby') hunkered down in a back corner booth of a Tim Horton's and you slowly sipped your tenth or eleventh or, for all you could remember, _one-hundredth_ coffee and crossed your fingers that the voice on the other end of the line wouldn't break your heart.

(Though the coffee was already doing a bang up job on _that_.)

That call came and the voice on the other end of the line was slow and groggy and weak, but it was fucking _her_ and that was all that really _mattered_ , or so you kept telling yourself.

(Fuck all liar, remember?)

They'd won, she said. More or less (emphasis on the 'more', like she was trying to sell you on it or maybe she was selling herself.) The widows were dead, Bobo was in the wind, and oh, yeah, the demon was awake, but there was no sign so far and Dolls had a _file_ (she always did love the research) and they were sure there would be something in it, some clue or some hidden secret they'd find just in the nick of time and Wynonna would use it and save the day.

 _The_ day.

As in, _not_ this one. Not _today_.

They'd won, she said, but just the battle. The war was still on and what with Bulshar awake out there, looming and lurking ("can he be doing _both_?" she asked and you damn near _died_ from the cute) it still wasn't safe. Not for the baby,she said, though _she_ said 'Alice', and that just made it, made _her_ real, made her something more than just a tiny squirming bundle in a blanket, hustling you right on out of that some _where_ you'd finally found and, you'll admit ( _now_ ), you didn't want to hear it, you didn't want to hear _her_ say that name.

It sounded too much (and nothing at all) like when she said _yours_ and _that_ was just one bridge too fucking _far_.

"I want to tell you to come home," she said and you thought, just for a moment, that she actually _might_. "There's nothing I want more in this world then for you to come back."

Nothing _except_ …

"No," she said and you realized that _you'd_ said it _out loud_. "Not _except_. And… _God_ … I know that makes me… _shit_ … I don't even know _what_ that makes me,that I'd even think of it like that, but I do, Nicole. You have to know _that_. I do."

You didn't know - and you _still_ don't - if she meant it or how it made you feel to think that she just _might_ , but whether she did or not, she never asked, she never put you on the spot, there was no chance she ever would, no matter how badly you both wanted her to.

And you knew then (and _now_ ) that was _exactly_ what made her every bit the hero fate had apparently ordained her sister to be. Blood be fucking _damned_.

She asked after the baby and she asked if you were both doing alright and she mentioned that no, Wynonna didn't want to or maybe just couldn't talk and you got the feeling that maybe she didn't or couldn't cause, well, she wasn't _there_ , like maybe she'd run (though obviously not _far_ ) and, really, you didn't think _you_ could blame her.

You just hoped Waverly felt the same.

She promised you then, promised that there would be another call, that they'd be reaching out again and soon - this Bulshar _bullshit_ just would not stand - and they'd have _the_ plan, seeing as how they had all their big brains and a definite surplus of crazy and they'd figure it out, come up with something that would let you and _her_ both come home. Maybe more talismans around the homestead or some spell from yet _another_ witch or maybe she'd just make some crazy ass wish on a trophy or maybe...

Or maybe.

The story of your life. Your _new_ one.

Or, maybe, that call would come in a week or a month and it would be Doc or it would be Dolls and they'd be calling to tell you she was gone and your heart would break (shatter) (explode) (shrivel to nothing inside your chest) and you'd think that there was just no way you could go on and that it was all over and then Alice would cry or coo and you'd know you had to find a way.

Or, maybe, it would come in the dead of the night and it would be her and she'd be calling to tell you she'd found someone else - I owed you the truth, she'd say - and she felt like calling was a thing she needed to do, that she needed you to know, that _she_ needed to release you and then Alice would cry or coo and you'd know.

Waverly wasn't the one holding you anymore.

Or maybe… well… maybe it would be a year and a half later and you'd still be waiting for that call except that now, really, you're not _waiting_. Your phone doesn't sit right next to your pillow every night and you don't check it a dozen times a day to make sure the ringer is still on and there are moments - day long ones, sometimes - when you _almost_ forget that call might ever come.

And then, after that, there are moments - week long ones, _at least_ , when you wonder what that says about you.

That call, the only one that's ever come, ended abruptly. She couldn't hold it together anymore, the tears coming and the words slowing and it was suddenly just too hard and suddenly just too much and she swore - in a waterlogged gurgling and hiccuping voice - that she'd call again _soon_ and you'd be coming home _soon_ and this would all be over (all _this_ , not you, not _you and her_ ) so very _soon_.

"I love you," she said, the last three words you've ever heard from her and they were ridiculously perfectly clear.

"I love you too," you said.

You think she heard you. But the line went dead so fast and she was just… gone… and then Alice was fussing again and it was time to move and yeah, you think she heard you.

But you don't _know_.

And you kinda doubt you ever will.

* * *

The ad was simple.

 _One bedroom, second floor apartment over family home. Kitchen, living room, one bath. Quiet neighborhood, quite home._

The typo was what did it, you think. Quite home. It made you laugh and _that_ made Alice laugh and that - even if you knew, logically, it wasn't _really_ a laugh - was all it took.

Well… that _and_ the fact that you were almost out of money and hotel rooms were a lousy place to raise a kid and it had been two _months_. The call wasn't coming but that hadn't brought life to a screeching halt. Alice kept eating and growing and changing - two months for a tiny is like six _years_ for a… well… _biggie_ \- and maybe you'd never thought much about raising a kid, but you'd developed enough common sense to know that all the moving and moving and moving and did you mention _moving_ wasn't good for her.

And it wasn't all that good for you, either, and no, that didn't have anything at all to do with the way moving felt more like _running_ and _hiding_ and so, settling somewhere seemed like the way to go and if you were going to settle anywhere, a quiet neighborhood (and _quite_ home) was the perfect call. At least for a start.

Not that you thought of it like that. As a _start_.

A start meant there was more to come, upgrades and changes and growing and you swore that there'd be none of any of _that_ , except from Alice and, really, that would only happen if you could stop hustling her from place to place, spot to spot, and so, start or not, it was clear that checking the place out - the address listed in the ad was only three streets over and you'd already called for an appointment - seemed like a plan.

And, as plans went, it was good. It was solid and smart and, you don't mind saying, it was just about the most logical (and adult) thing you'd ever come up with.

Right until you got there and you sat out in the street in your car (not _your_ car cause you'd sold that one a month and a half ago and bought this one from a different dealer and paid in all cash and yeah, that was a bit of why your money was running out) and stared up at it, at the place.

 _The_ place.

It didn't have a white picket fence because, really, that would just be _too_ perfect, that would have made it the Mary fucking Sue of places.

The fence was brown. And old. Wood with knots in the boards and a couple loose planks in a few spots and oh, you couldn't picture Alice pushing those out of the way, trying to crawl out of the yard to freedom.

No, you couldn't picture that _at all_.

You thought about asking Alice what _she_ thought, but you weren't so far gone yet that you were asking a three month old for opinions.

"You like it," you said and so, clearly, you were just far enough gone to be _giving_ said three month old opinions.) There was movement behind the curtains, and you saw two small dark eyes checking you out, wondering why you weren't moving.

They weren't the only ones.

Actually… they _were_. You weren't wondering at all why you weren't moving. You'd been doing so much of that lately - always moving, running, checking and double-checking and watching in the rear-view the entire time - that just sitting, just being _still_ , especially in the face of such huge change, it just felt… _right_.

And _that_ felt like something you should savor, lest it never come again.

But then it was like five or six or _fifteen_ minutes and just sitting (and savoring) had gotten a bit creepy and so you pulled yourself out of the car, Alice on your hip - eyes so bright and moving, like her mother _before_ her first shot of the day (and you're not sure whether you mean drink or gun shot or if it even matters) - and you took the ten old concrete steps up from the street, two at a time, knocking on the door before you lost your nerve.

You smiled when she opened the door, her dirty blonde and gray hair bunned atop her head, a pair of ripped (from age, not from _hip_ ) jeans on beneath a paint stained tee and, in that moment she reminded you so _little_ of your own mother that you thought that maybe this just might work.

"Hi," you said, "I'm Nikki and this is my daughter, Alice. I called about the apartment?"

She stepped aside and ushered the two of you in and as the door closed behind you, you tried your damnedest to ignore the symbolism of it all. You know, one door closing but another (the door to the upstairs apartment that she's unlocked with a tiny key you can almost feel burning in your hand already) opening. One life ending and another… well…

It was a start.

A year and a half later, you think that now, _maybe_ , you can call it something else: a some _where_ and a some _one_ and a _fit._

It's just.

Just enough.


	2. Eventually

It was Wynonna who made the plan that sent you on your way, but it was Dolls who sent you the gift that saved you.

You found the gift somewhere just outside of Abilene, in the trunk, in the well where the spare was supposed to sit. Your first thought - practical to the fucking _last_ \- was that you were lucky you hadn't had a blow out sometime in the last forty straight hours you and Alice had spent on the road.

Your second thought was how did he know.

How did he _know_?

You pulled off to the side of the road when his text came, onto the shoulder of some deserted stretch of Highway Something or Other, which you knew was _so_ _not_ the official name, but that was sorta the point, right? It was all about _not_ knowing - something you'd had more than your share of experience with since coming to Purgatory - but at least _this_ time it was _intentional_.

You'd spent the better part of a day and a half, from the moment Waverly's call ended till the moment Dolls texted, trying as hard as you could to _get_ lost, to make you and Alice both just disappear. And you can't be lost if _you_ know where you are. That's just basic, though, in all honesty?

Right about then, basic was almost a full step up from the best you could manage.

"We'll see them all again," you told Alice, your voice amounting to little more than a whisper in the dark car as you drove on and on through the night, wondering which would give out first: the gas tank, or your control over the wall in your head and heart, the one _just_ holding it all back, at least enough that you could function. _Your_ money, such as it was (and it wasn't much, certainly not the kind of much you'd need to _last_ ) was on the gas.

After all, you and that wall were old friends and it had never let you down yet.

(Yet might have been the operative word.)

You knew - you were _well aware_ \- that it was the fears that kept you moving more than anything else, a tangible stew of them: worry that Bobo had found a way out, that the Widows hadn't _died_ as much as _vanished_ , that Black Badge was lurking round every bend in the road, black copters set to descend on you at the next crossroads, the men in white coats _coming_ for her and _leaving_ you.

There was no road back to Purgatory as it was. If you lost Alice…

Who says you can't go home again? Wynonna 'you lost my baby and now I'm going to have to lose a bullet in your skull' Earp, _that's_ who.

"She'd never forgive me," you said and Alice didn't disagree _and_ she didn't ask which 'she' you meant cause, really? Even the baby knew it was _both_.

So you kept rolling, your phone jacked into the cigarette lighter - might as well get some use out of it, right? - so there'd be no way you might miss the next call or text or email or desperate cries from home and no, you didn't dwell on how easily you were already starting to think of _anywhere_ else as _that_ , or how easily you could find yourself thinking of home as _her_ and _not_ the her it had been just days before.

Looking back on it now - and you try _not_ to, but like the wise little green man once said, there is _no_ try, there is do or do not and you, unfortunately, _do_ more than you don't - even with the 20-20 of hindsight, it's almost funny, a laughable bit of dark irony. You kept going ( _running_ ) always one step ahead of those stewing fears, but no matter how far you got (and the _further_ , the _faster_ , but that didn't matter _either_ ) there was no real amount of distance that you could ever put between you and that last call.

And that was last as in the most _recent_ and _not_ last as in final or never to happen again or the end of things. "That's a metaphor," you said, "distance, I mean." You said it out loud, like Alice could understand or, maybe, as if _you_ could. "A call's not really a thing you can run from. Like, it's just a memory, it's just something I did. It isn't like it's a person or a place or a thing that you can…"

Escape.

That was the word you were looking for - _escape: verb, to break free of, to make one's getaway, to make a run for it_ \- and it wasn't like you had to look all that hard, it was easy enough to find it right there on the tip of your tongue _and_ the it's been _right there_ since you crossed on out of the Triangle more-than-tip of your brain. It was easy to find but hard to say (impossible) and so you didn't and that was OK.

Not like there was someone around to call you out on it. And no, you didn't avoid her eyes in the rearview because of that.

Not _just_ because of that, anyway.

* * *

The text from Dolls came at like one-thirty in the morning and you drove another hour - 85 some odd miles - before you actually read it.

You'd taken to driving at night because the dark and the hum of the engine and the steady roll of the pavement beneath her soothed Alice, put her to sleep better than any bottle or book or poor rendition of a lullaby ever could. She was, you often thought, her mother's child.

Running suited her.

Hotel rooms were the order of the day (literally, you slept in the daylight and it only took a week or so for _you_ to adjust) and, as the time wore on, even that was slowly turning, going from _ho_ to _mo_ as your bank account went from _mo_ to _lo_. You'd maxed your cash advances on three credit cards, emptied your checking (but not your savings cause can't get blood from a stone) (except, _maybe_ , in Purgatory) and done a mental inventory of anything you had that you could sell.

It was a short list that started with your blood and ended with the baby and no, neither of those was _really_ an option.

Those thoughts did you no good. They bred worry in your mind and regret in your heart and, apparently, made you think like some third rate internet poet. You did your best to keep them at bay, focusing on one move and then the next, trusting that somehow it would all work out, that salvation would find you in the next dirty room, sleeping on the next set of shouldn't be _touched_ but _God_ they felt good (compared to the driver's seat of your shit car) sheets.

Salvation never came, but a port in the storm did, like a life preserver giving you just enough to hang on to so you could stay afloat amongst the waves. Somehow, Dolls _knew_ and he sent the only thing he could: hope. But _you_ didn't know that - not _yet_ , anyway - cause you were a bit too busy driving which, you know, was just code for doing all you could to ignore the absolute _fuck_ out of that text message.

Reading it would have meant stopping and _that_ was just not happening and it wasn't because you were making good time (you'd need a destination for that) and it had little or nothing to do with worrying about what might be out there, in the dark, off in the shadows and no, you didn't think it was supernatural or weird _or_ supernatural weird - regular weird, which you vaguely sort of remembered, was bad enough - cause you had your gun _and_ you had your training _and_ you had a whole load of 'I escaped the Ghost River Triangle _and_ Jack _and_ Bobo Del Ray _and_ , most of all, _Wynonna_ ' running through you, and that was enough to make any regular weird seem like a fucking cake walk.

So, for eighty-five miles (eighty-three point seven, to be exact) (you slowed down once when Alice cried and you had to reach back to rub a gentle hand across her cheek) you focused on the white lines and the yellow lines and the thin strips of light-lines from your fading headlights and pretended - as best you could - that your phone hadn't buzzed and that there wasn't some message just sitting there, waiting for you.

You lasted longer than you expected which, you figure, had something to do with being really damn good at pretending except, honestly, you're _fuck all_ at pretending and you always have been.

Just ask every boy who ever tried to kiss you.

Or the woman who stared back at you in the mirror every morning for a week after you first met Waverly. The one who laughed - _laughed_ \- when you said (out loud) "She's OK. Not all that or anything. She's just… yeah."

"That's your aunt," you said to Alice as you steered around a bend that was at least forty-five degrees sharper than it had any right to be. "She's… yeah."

So very very yeah and even now, when it's been long enough that you almost can't remember what the gentle curves and slopes of her face felt like beneath your fingers, you still remember _that_.

You _also_ remember that what you are good at (and always _were_ ) is hiding from your fears, and that's exactly what you were doing that night cause that message had awakened a river o'terror inside you. You remember feeling _afraid_ , like _deathly_ , like fucking _petrified_.

Though only _part_ of that was over the message and what it might say (come home) or what it might _not_ (also, come home.)

Mostly though, you were afraid to stop, terrified that if you did, you'd never _start_ again. "We'll just go a little further," you told her - no protest - and downshifted, wondering, not for the first time, why _you'd_ ever been possessed by the urge to own a stick shift. "It'll be OK," you said, and you _swear_ it wasn't a lie. "You'll see. Whatever it is… it'll be OK."

Alice _got_ OK, you thought. She _understood_ OK, and every time your eyes darted to the rear view, checking up on her back there - quite OK, herself - tucked safely under six or seven or, seemingly, _a hundred_ harnesses, buckled in, strapped up, and locked _down_ , in a seat that it took an engineering degree to work, you breathed just a little easier.

And then your phone buzzed again cause you hadn't checked it yet and it was getting impatient and it was so _not_ OK and, you know what?

Fuck _easier_. You were just glad you were still breathing. And that 'still', you knew, would last just as long as you kept going.

And going. And going.

Eighty-five miles of going. Eighty-three-point-seven.

To be _exact_.

About halfway along (forty-one-point-two)(to be exact) you started counting the number of times you peeked into the backseat to check on the baby, which totally wasn't meant as a distraction, something to focus on besides that infernal buzzing, nope, not at all.

It was, you told yourself more than once, something _like_ maternal instinct. You were sure all mothers (real or.. otherwise) did that same thing, always checking, that they all spent _hours_ , especially during those first few days of life, wandering around in a near permanent checking haze of paranoia, all of them waiting for the hammer to fall, for the worst that they were _sure_ would be coming any moment.

And it was, you told yourself (just once), only a matter of time before you _stopped_ thinking of mothers as a "them" and a "they" and _started_ thinking of "we" and "us".

For once, you weren't wrong.

"Most of them," you said, and even then 'them' sounded just… wrong. "They probably don't ever think that worst might be a demon or a witch or even a semi-immortal gunslinging baby daddy, now do they?" Alice didn't answer (she was clearly _thinking_ that you were right.) "I suppose that's what makes us different and different is _special_ , right baby girl?"

(And no, _those_ two words didn't sound wrong at all.)

Alice still didn't answer - even if you feared, for just a second, that through some magic, she just _might_ \- but you were sure she'd agree with you. After all, _none_ of the women in her life had ever been much for doing anything the _traditional_ way.

"We're probably safe from all that," you told her, all the while thinking that, eventually, when she was old enough to understand the notion of 'probably', you might have to stop using it. And no, you didn't once pause at the thought that there would, maybe, be an 'eventually'.

You _did_ pause at the buzz of the phone and if the road hadn't been so damn twisty, you'd have reached over and shut the damn thing off. And you knew you would, sooner or later, cause the road had to straighten out at some point, right?

Of course it did.

You know… eventually.

* * *

So, about all those eventuallys.

You've had your share of those by now, crossed more than a few of Alice's developmental lines in the sand - first time rolling over, first crawl, first time standing up which looked, honestly, a lot like her _mother's_ first time standing up after one too many (wobbles and bobbles and chock full of oopsie-daisy) - and every one of them was one more border, one more step across that _other_ line, the one running round the Triangle, one more unsteady step _out_ of Office Haught and baby girl Earp and _into_ Nikki and Alice, the Randall family.

Yes, Randall. As in Randy. As in Nedley. As in Dolls' gift and his sense of humor and oh, how you planned to slug him in the arm if you ever saw him again.

You're not sure, like _at all_ , when it started being 'if' and not 'when' and how you didn't notice that it did. Or why that doesn't bother you more.

(And when you say 'more', you mean 'at all', and no, you don't think about that.)

(Much.)

All of those steps she's taken, you've taken right alongside her, the two of you stepping on out of the ghosts and into the _real_ world. It's funny to you, _now_ , that you've realized just how _unreal_ all of it felt, back in Purgatory. You used to think that _that_ was the real, when all the danger and the risk and the peek behind the human curtain (and the Waverly) of it all dizzied you up, made life on the other side - beyond the Ghost River and past the town limits and out where there was no Black Badge and no demons - seem so empty and fake and _pointless_.

Six months ago, Alice stood, holding herself up with two hands on the tiny ottoman in your tiny apartment and she looked at you with her tiny eyes and…

 _mama_

And there was the only point you think you're ever going to need.

When you think of Purgatory now, when you think of that life, it's almost always as something more hazy dream then vivid memory, a thing you remember - vaguely - but only in the dark of night, when she's sleeping softly beside your bed, there's no more diapers (for a few minutes,  
at least) and the stories have been read and the bottles drained and those once in the bluest

of moons minutes of life you managed to schedule in have faded away.

That's when _she_ comes, the thoughts of _her_. Unbidden and without warning. And you're never sure what breaks your heart more. When she comes.

Or when she's gone again.

But then Alice cries or coos or snores (my _God_ , does she _snore_ ) and you're reminded again, that _she's_ real and _you're_ real and the pillow beneath your head and the ceiling above you and the floors beneath you… all _real_.

And you think of that gift Dolls left you, stashed in your wheel well, like somehow, he'd always known.

When you go to work the next morning at the library, when some tiny kid who's no more yours than Alice is ( _really_ ) asks you for help finding a book - an _actual_ one with _pages_ and everything and not some digitized lifelike interpretation of one - it's Miss Randall they ask.

And that's thanks to Dolls.

When you come home that night, to the smell of Mrs. Ruth's Wednesday night BBQ chicken and twice baked potatoes and fresh cilantro on the salad and the sight of Alice, smiling and giggling and so excited that you're… home… it's Nikki that comes through the door.

It's mama.

And that's thanks to Dolls.

That's thanks to the papers you found in your trunk when you finally pulled over. The ID's and the documents, the social security and birth certificate and college transcripts and the resume.

A _resume_.

One that, of course, left off Black Badge consultant and unofficial agent and deputy and all around badass. Instead, he made you a librarian.

A _librarian_.

Complete with degree and work experience and not too shabby salary requirements and some serious research skills and he _made you a librarian_.

"It's safe," he wrote in his note. "It's safe and it's quiet and it's probably the one thing you could do that would make Waverly swoon even more so you're welcome."

It's all there, everything you could ever need - including a bank account and debit card _and_ a credit card and which Black Badge off the books slush funds those all trace back to, you really don't wanna know - and it's all perfect, the sort of perfect that would fool anyone who wouldn't think to even look and _that_ you know, is his real gift.

A life. Off the radar, off the line, _out_ of the line _of fire_. All the things you thought you never wanted.

You closed the trunk, leaning against the car and staring into the dark night, down the twisting road you knew you were gonna be on for just a little bit longer. And right then and there, you promised yourself that you'd tell her. That someday, she'd know the truth. About her mother and her aunt and her father.

About the man that gave her life.

And when you think of it now, of that night and that text and that gift, it's mostly another one of those hazy dreams, another moment or two that's gotten lost in the shuffle of eighteen months and eighteen _hundred_ diapers and a life you sometimes forget you haven't always lived.

But you remember that promise. As clear as a fucking bell, you remember _that_. And you know you'll keep it.

Eventually.


End file.
